Education: Schools For Sale

In the trade it has been notorious for several years that the college business, what with sluggish enrollment and a drying up of endowment sources, is bad. Big, well-heeled colleges and universities and a few progressive institutions are prosperous, but many a small college does not know where its next student is coming from. Last fortnight Trentwell Mason White of Boston’s Curry School (a small college) reported a buyers’ market in colleges. In an article in The Commentator, “Colleges for Sale,” he related his findings:

> Forty or 50 colleges are offered for sale each year. Reasons: lack of operating capital, reorganization of college-owning churches, retirement of college-owning individuals, desire of some owners to go into a different business.

> Prices range from $20,000 for a 30-year-old, money-making college with 200 students to $250,000 for a more elaborate institution with an excellent reputation.

> Buyers usually are lawyers (who often find a college a political asset), physicians, retired government officials, publishers. College professors would like to buy, seldom can raise the money.

> Although most colleges are ostensibly non-profit corporations, actually many owners pay themselves a profit in the form of salary.

> “A college [according to bullish Mr. White] is a good investment. . . . The buyer usually gets a minimum of 6% on his money . . . in some cases . . . $50,000 a year.”

Mr. White’s article smoked out considerable idle curiosity and some idle capital. By last week he had received, by telephone, telegraph and mail from all over the land, 150 inquiries. Some of the inquirers: politicians, butchers, lawyers, realtors, a junk dealer. Most appeared to be merely window-shoppers, but some asked whether they could swap unspecified possessions for a college; one man was prepared to invest $100,000.